28 April 2009
Half of Population at Risk for Curable, Preventable Malaria
World Malaria Day promotes measurement of eradication progress
Washington — Malaria infects more than 500 million people a year and kills more than 1 million — mostly infants, young children and pregnant women in Africa. Fighting the disease takes the determined work of many around the world, all of whom were recognized on April 25, World Malaria Day.
The annual commemoration — instituted by the World Health Organization’s World Health Assembly in 2007 — is an opportunity for countries in affected regions to learn from each other's experiences. New donors were encouraged to join the global partnership against malaria, as researchers and academic institutions highlighted their successes in combating the disease.
“The United States stands with our global partners and people around the world to reaffirm our commitment to make the U.S. a leader in ending deaths from malaria by 2015,” President Barack Obama said in an April 24 statement.
“This begins with ending malaria as a major public health threat in Africa,” he added, “where it kills nearly 1 million people each year and overwhelms public health systems. It is time to redouble our efforts to rid the world of a disease that does not have to take lives.”
The theme of this year's World Malaria Day was “Counting Malaria Out.” The Roll Back Malaria Partnership, whose partners include the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative and the World Health Organization (WHO), is launching a campaign to engage partners in a comprehensive effort to count and quantify the progress and impact of the fight against malaria.
“We know we can put an end to this cycle of disease and poverty,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an April 24 video statement. “In the last few years we have witnessed a growing global effort to combat this curable and preventable disease.”
U.S. CONTRIBUTION
In fiscal year 2009, the United States will commit $527 million to fighting malaria. It has contributed more than $3.3 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told the audience at an April 24 World Malaria Day event in New York.
The President’s Malaria Initiative, launched in 2005, represents a historic $1.2 billion, five-year expansion of U.S. government resources to fight malaria in Africa. During its third year of implementation, the initiative’s work reached more than 32 million people.
In 2008, the U.S. procured more than 6.4 million mosquito nets to be distributed free to pregnant women and young children, and 15.6 million doses of anti-malarial drug treatments. The U.S. government also sponsored indoor spraying that covered 6 million houses and protected nearly 25 million people.
But the work is not complete, Rice said. “We must do more to target programs within a handful of particularly hard-hit countries, including Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania, which together account for roughly half the global deaths from malaria. We must do more to deliver nets and drugs to civilians battered by conflict or housed in refugee camps. And we must do more to beat back the specter of drug-resistant strains of malaria and ultimately move toward a second-generation vaccine.”
As part of the 2010 foreign assistance budget, Rice said, Obama plans to request robust investments in life-saving global health programs in such areas as maternal and child health, family planning and other core health programs.
THE MALARIA CHALLENGE
Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by the one-celled Plasmodium falciparum parasite and three closely related species. Each parasite lives part of its life in people and part in mosquitoes. The parasites are transmitted to people in the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes.
Half the world's population is at risk for malaria, especially those in less developed countries. The burden of malaria is heaviest in sub-Saharan Africa, but the disease also afflicts people in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Europe.
In 2008, the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) developed a strategic plan for malaria research and outlined a comprehensive research agenda for malaria pathogenesis, immunology and epidemiology to better understand the complex interactions among malaria parasites, mosquito vectors and human hosts.
“While we celebrate important advances in the fight against malaria, we also recognize the enormous challenges that lie ahead,” Dr. Lee Hall, chief of the Parasitology and International Programs Branch in the NIAID Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, and NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote in an April 25 statement.
“For example,” they wrote, “we need faster and more reliable methods for diagnosing malaria to identify different parasite species and drug-resistant strains that may emerge. We also need to develop systematic ways to translate the enormous wealth of basic information concerning the parasite and mosquito vectors into effective strategies for treating and controlling malaria.”
MALARIA RESEARCH
Researchers supported by NIAID are making progress in developing new countermeasures to fight malaria. NIAID-supported scientists are engaged in research and development that supports about a third of the worldwide malaria drug-research portfolio.
NIAID also supports research on 20 vaccine candidates, seven of which are in clinical trials. Studies on basic mosquito biology have led to the identification of genetic markers involved in insecticide resistance that are now being evaluated for use in the field.
NIAID also has launched a new initiative, the International Centers of Excellence in Malaria Research, to support a novel, global, multidisciplinary approach to understanding malaria in the evolving context of control, elimination and eradication.
A video statement by Secretary of State Clinton on World Malaria Day is available online at the YouTube Web Site.
More information about World Malaria Day is available at the WHO malaria Web site and the CDC malaria Web site.
